How to Prioritize Your SEO Efforts Right Now

The breakneck speed of Google algorithm updates can push your website to the brink. Google keeps making updates to be the best, and SEOs keep trying to outsmart the changes that happen.

At the end of last year, mobile and speed related updates took some of us by surprise. These have changed the way we use to build our SEO campaigns. Here’s what you should be focusing on for search right now:

Mobile First Indexing

Source: moz.com

Mobile First Indexing has been talk of the city since March 2018. In a nutshell, it means that Google will prioritize the mobile version of any website for crawling and indexing. Certainly, this major shift has left the SEO world in confusion. But to be specific this shift addresses only indexing — not ranking. Indexing doesn’t affect the ranking of a website. Then what factors will be challenged by Mobile First Indexing? If you have a responsive website with the same content on mobile and desktop version, you don’t have to worry much. But there could be a problem when your mobile version has less content than desktop. Typically because of space and size reasons such things happen. If the missing content includes major ranking signals your webpage might get a hit on google search results. To reduce the risk you should run Google Mobile-Friendly Test and fix the issues.

Voice Search

source: kpcb internet trends

Voice Search allows a user to speak into the device instead of typing a keyword into the search box. With the growing number of smartphones, voice search applications like Siri, Google Assistant and Cortana are clearly getting popularity — and that too at a very rapid rate. Devices as Google Home, Amazon Echo and Alexa are also making voice search an essential part of the household. According to a report published in campaignlive– by the year 2020, Voice search will cover 50% of all searches. Also, 30% of the queries will be answered by the voice assistant. If you want to be future ready, you need to employ voice search optimization techniques for search engines. Voice search needs a completely different SEO strategy, here’s some you should start applying:

Google’s featured snippets: Google favors short answers to voice queries and shows results of 29 words on average. Targeting for Google’s featured snippets can gain you top result in google voice searches.

Local SEO: 39% of the voice searches are about Local businesses Information. You should keep your Local Business Listings up to date. You can optimize it by getting online reviews and using schema.

Responsiveness: Most of the voice searches are done through Mobiles, so it goes without saying your website should be mobile friendly.

AI for SEO

Artificial intelligence (AI) has been the buzzword for quite a long time. AI along with the machine learning — is the technology behind SERP. Even Google’s RankBrain’s Technology is based on AI which makes search results more human. RankBrain understands the meaning of crawled content and suggests intent for ambiguous queries. This helps Google to improve search results. Two years ago Sundar Pichai outlined Google’s plan as “AI-first” company. We should be ready and expect Google search to change dramatically as AI can be the central stage of Google search algorithm in future. Google understands that AI can deliver better results and so, they are working on an accelerated pace on this front. Search Marketers need to have close attention to AI advancements if they want to avail opportunities. For now, AI can help to fight the SEO challenges we face. Here are three key points, where AI can be used to improve SEO performance:

Insights: Artificial intelligence can prepare and understand patterns of data to the extent people could simply never achieve. It can help get new insights that may have gone unseen.

Automation: SEO needs a huge amount of attention and labor over long period. Using AI we can automate some tasks such as Technical Audits, Tag management, Internal Linking, etc.

Personalization: Every consumer is different and using AI, search marketers can develop useful and relevant experiences for each person.

Content Relevance and Quality

Source: Forbes

For each query we make, search engines access their Index library and show the results which meet best to user requirement. With over 3 million blogs getting published everyday, ranking better can be a tough nut to crack. In August 2018, Google rolled out a core algorithm update and SEO world named it “Medic Update.” Even many big sites got hit and lost thousands of organic traffic. But there was something common in these websites — they had low quality & less relevant content. The solution here is E-A-T content.

E-A-T stands for:

Expertise: Means a website owner needs to show the expertise of the writer for the Main Content.

Authoritativeness: If you are a website owner you should be authorized for the MC.

Trustworthiness: Users should trust the creator or company of the MC.

With E-A-T around your corner, chances of ranking well in the search results can improve.

Concluding Thoughts:

With the increase in mobile usages, voice-driven searches are dominating but we must continue to generate relevant content to meet searcher intent. As the internet grows and becomes crowded, SEO will not be an easy battle to win.